Thursday, October 20, 2011

Lord Christopher Monckton on The Hamster Wheel

Watched the Hamster Wheel last night. It has excellent production values, and clearly a lot of money has been spent on it. But it's just dreadful. The Chaser boys just seem to have a knack for killing every comedy idea they have stone dead.

It's not just that they're drearily leftist. There are lots of shows written and performed by liberals in the US for example that are still very funny. That's because they have genuine wit and humanity in what they do, and the performers are often skillful, particularly when it comes to characterization. But the Chaser boys don't have any of that. The vast majority of their work that I've seen is mean-spirited in its intention and clumsy in its execution. 

But just on that aspect of PC: They did a segment attacking Lord Monckton that said a lot about where they -- and for that matter the whole warmist crowd -- are at the moment. The "gag" was that Monckton was Sasha Baron Cohen's latest comedy character. They managed to get him to do an interview, clearly after misrepresenting themselves. He twigged after a while and told the interviewer to get out. It was meant to make him look stupid, but just showed what a nasty, witless exercize it was.

And it certainly ended up making the comics involved look far more pompous and silly than Monckton himself. If you're going to try and damage someone's intellectual credibility through mockery (clearly what they were intending to do with the sketch) then you should have your own facts right. But the script was sorely lacking in this regard.

For example there's a bit where Shaun Micallef (who, unlike the Chaser boys, is actually capable of being genuinely witty and funny) guffaws loudly at Monckton's description of the Hitler Youth as green and left-wing -- as if it's the most absurd and ridiculous claim imaginable. But Monckton's description is quite accurate. Nazism was national socialism, after all. It was a totalitarian, collectivist ideology. And it's a well established fact that Hitler and his party were big time nature lovers with much support from the greens of the day.

Another own goal was the decision to invoke Sacha Baron Cohen. Not only did they use him as an ingredient in the alleged gag, they also employed his favoured tactic of deceiving the interviewee. In that sense it was something of an homage to him. But Baron Cohen is a master of the hoax and prank comedy genre that the Chaser boys do so poorly. He stays in character brilliantly and extracts real humour out of what he's doing. But Craig Reucassel's lame effort, delivered in his usual smugly self conscious and unimaginative way, just served as a reminder of how second rate he and his fellow pranksters actually are.

But these were side issues. The most revealing thing was that the sketch didn't address the issue of climate change at all. They just used the same old mud that warmists routinely hurl at their nemesis, such as the angle that he is not a true Lord -- something that was effectively rebutted by Monckton himself showing his passport. So, there was yet another own goal there.

These warmist "satirists" now all know they've lost the argument. But they hate him all the same. In fact they hate him even more because he's trounced them so comprehensively on the issue itself. So they've decided they're just going to make fun of his appearance and mannerisms instead. But they can't even do that very well.

Truly desperate, mean-spirited stuff. And not remotely funny (unless you're a retarded leftie bong suckler, of course). 

The segment is around the five and half minute mark if you want to have a look.

3 comments:

  1. I never thought much of the Chaser gang, but they wrote themselves right out of the comedy book with their 'gag' about dying kids.
    They're coming to the global warming debate and Monckton rather late, aren't they? It's as if they couldn't tackle the issue while it was actually hot (no pun intended), waiting until it had slipped down in the public's notice.

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  2. Yes, I remember the ruckus over that sketch well. Actually, their grovelling apology was probably the funniest thing they've ever done.

    They just seem to have such a ham fisted approach to everything they do. They don't bother with characterization or timing, and they seem to think that just slagging things off from a smug, PC perspective constitutes comedy.

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  3. they seem to think that just slagging things off from a smug, PC perspective constitutes comedy
    Indeed.
    The dubious benefits of a tertiary education.

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